Tuesday, September 29, 2009

From Asahi.comBY TOMOYA ISHIKAWATHE ASAHI SHIMBUNIt was the Nazi tome in which Adolf Hitler outlined his belief in the superiority of the Aryan race and his anti-semitic thoughts. But "Mein Kampf" has found a new audience in Japan, where a manga version of Hitler's fascist manifesto and part autobiography has become a minor hit since its publication late last year. The release has fueled concerns in Germany, where the book remains banned more than 60 years after Hitler (1889-1945) led the country to catastrophic defeat in World War II. Tokyo publisher East Press released "Waga Toso," or "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), in November last year. The publisher said it wants to give the public an insight into Hitler as a person rather than simply demonizing him as the leader who was responsible for the Holocaust. The 190-page publication renders his notorious book--a combination of autobiography and fascist political ideology--as a collection of cartoon images and captions. It is one of 45 world classics that have been made into manga for the "Manga de Dokuha" (Let's read world classics in manga) series. Included in the series are iconic titles such as "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, "The Merchant of Venice" by William Shakespeare, "The Capital" by Karl Marx, "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and "Ningen Shikkaku" (No Longer Human) by Osamu Dazai. Each manga is produced by editor Kosuke Maruo, who compiles dialogue and arranges the narrative, and artists from production company Variety Art Works, who draw the images. The manga version of "Mein Kampf" tells the story of Hitler's upbringing, his decision to create the Nazi Party and his motivation for writing the book. It also includes depictions of his infamous anti-Semitic pronouncements. Sales hit 45,000 in the first six months, defying the publisher's modest expectations. Other editions in the series have sold, on average, 35,000 copies. Maruo, 32, said the publisher included Hitler's autobiographical manifesto in the series because it wanted to give readers a glimpse into Hitler the person, as opposed to "the monster." "'Mein Kampf' is a well-known book, but relatively few people have read it," Maruo said. "We think this will provide clues about Hitler as a human being, as to his way of thinking that led to such tragedy, even though he was dismissed as a 'monster.'" It was not long before the publication attracted interest from international media organizations such as the BBC of Britain and CNN in the United States. Martin Koelling, the East Asia correspondent for the German edition of the Financial Times, wrote an article in February in which he described the manga version as "interesting" and meaningful. "It's a new approach," Koelling said. "There's a risk in using cartoon images and text to tell this story. But the book is an important document because it's Hitler's manifesto. It's important that people try to understand his thinking in a critical way." In Japan, where the manga has sparked an online debate over the ramifications of introducing Hitler's work into wider circulation, some have not been so complimentary. One poster described the publication as "insensitive," while another said the new work pandered to the sympathies of neo-Nazis. But another said that continuing to resist publication of the book would only increase fascination about it. Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf" while he was imprisoned in Munich's Landsberg Castle for his role in a failed attempt to overthrow the Weimar government in 1923. The Finance Ministry of the state of Bavaria, which holds the copyright to the book, has refused to grant permission to reprint it out of sensitivity to victims of Nazi atrocities. The ministry lodged a strong protest when a Czech-language edition was published without permission in 2000. Under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, however, Japanese publishers are entitled to publish a translation of a foreign-language book released in 1970 or earlier as long as no other translation was published within the first 10 years of release. Kadokawa Group Publishing Co. has released several reprints of a Japanese-language pocket edition of "Mein Kampf" since 1973. The Tokyo-based publisher says it did not need to seek permission from the Bavarian authorities. The manga version from East Press is based on Kadokawa's edition. In an e-mail interview with The Asahi Shimbun, the ministry said that it remains opposed to republication of "Mein Kampf" because of the pain and suffering the book still causes victims of the Nazis--even if it no longer carries its original symbolic significance. Debate is already under way in Germany over what should happen when the copyright for the original "Mein Kampf" expires in 2015. Some critics have said that manga is not a suitable medium for such controversial content. "Even 60 years after the end of war, Nazism remains a sensitive issue in Germany," said Toshio Obata, managing director of the state of Bavaria's Japan Office, who lived in Germany for 13 years. "Did East Press exhaust discussions before publishing it? Did it consider the difference between Japan and Germany as to how manga is viewed as a medium?" Some German historians, however, are opposed to the ban on the publication of "Mein Kampf." Clemens Vollnhals, a professor of history at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Research of the Technical University in Dresden, argues that book bans should not be tolerated in a free society. "The banning of books is a serious problem in a free society. The ban of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' may have been justified in the early years after the war, but now we have a totally different situation," he said. '"Mein Kampf' has no magical qualities. It is a badly written book, but it offers a deep insight into Hitler's thinking." Vollnhals' argument echoes the position taken by Kadokawa. The publisher said the German Embassy requested that it cease publication of the book about 10 years ago. After considering the matter, it decided that "depriving (readers of) an opportunity to critically examine the book would be unsound." Still, efforts to cast a light on the German dictator as an ordinary human are bound to attract controversy. In 2004, when then Toshiba Entertainment Inc. distributed "Max," a movie about Hitler's aspiration to be a painter, it canceled an exhibition of his watercolors after it was inundated with requests for interviews by foreign media.(IHT/Asahi: September 30,2009)

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Lane Truesdale & band in Who's Yehoodi? (short soundie from 1942).The catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" (or, alternatively, "Who's Yehudi?") originated when violinist Yehudi Menuhin was a guest on the popular radio program of Bob Hope, where sidekick Jerry Colonna, apparently finding the name itself humorous, repeatedly asked "Who's Yehudi?" Colonna continued the gag on later shows even though Menuhin himself was not a guest, turning "Yehudi" into a widely understood 1930s slang reference for a mysteriously absent person. This song with the title and catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" was written in 1940 by Bill Seckler and Matt Dennis. It was covered by Kay Kyser and more famously by Cab Calloway. The final stanza of the song is:The little man who wasn’t thereSaid he heard him on the airNo one seems to know from whereBut who's Yehoodi?Both the catchphrase and the song eventually lost all of their original connection with Menuhin. Its double meaning of "Who Is Jewish?" — the word "Yehudi" means "Jew" in the Hebrew language — was emphasized in a short sound film ("soundie") of the song with variant lyrics made in 1943 with singer Lane Truesdale and an unidentified male trio, in which a "living portrait" of a pejoratively stereotypical Jew with black hat and long beard leers inappropriately at Truesdale's swinging hips before finally announcing "I'm Yehoodi!"

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

I always wonder what point it actually serves to compare things to Hitler & Nazi Germany. For myself, when i was younger & accepted the idea that America was no better morally than Nazi Germany, to philosophically work myself out of that hole & love my country, i had to accept Nazi Germany as well. Today, i accept that Nazi Germany is a taboo interest, even if it is a very common one. It is more taboo today than it was when i was a kid, & much more taboo than in the 50s & 60s. I'm trying to figure that one out as well, i've got some theories involving Communists, but i'll leave that for later.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Profilo Continuo (Testa di Mussolini) sculpture, terracotta with black glaze, 1933, by Renato Giuseppe Bertelli, at the Imperial War Museum, who have this to say about the piece:

"'Profilo Continuo' was made in 1933, or Year Eleven of the new era, dating from Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922. At least two other terracotta copies of the head exist but it is not known how many were made. The Museum also owns two smaller versions..... Bertelli had also become interested in Futurist ideas and the theories of F T Marinetti during the 1920s and the head embodies their passion for machines, speed and power. The image is very much in keeping with Mussolini's own self-publicity of the time which presented him in the role of technological and cultural pioneer."

Sunday, September 13, 2009

I've heard rumors that Stalin had a program to create Communist Gorilla Super-Soldiers. It's hard to find reliable sources for this info, but it's floating around out there. Nevertheless, there are multiple issues of Weird War & similar titles out there with Nazi Gorilla soldiers.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Despite our country's intense hatred for him, Bin Laden is just not compared to Hitler. This points out a crucial element of why political leaders get compared to Hitler: POWER. Anyone who gets alot of power is immediately a target for comparisons to Hitler. It's not the goat-shagger from the caves of Islamadurkastan who looks like a mixture between Jesus & Snoop Dogg, releasing tapes that probably don't even feature him who we can't even pin the damn terrorist attacks on. No. He's not Hitler. Is he even real?

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Monday, September 7, 2009

Giorgio Napolitano, Italy's grandfatherly President, was trying not to squirm in his seat. But sitting center stage at a ceremony to honor World War II resistance fighters, the 83-year-old head of state couldn't help but wince as Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa shifted gears mid speech. "I would betray my conscience," La Russa declared, "if I did not recall other men in uniform." Those "other men" were the fascist Italian troops allied with the Nazi occupiers. "From their point of view," La Russa said of the Nembo division, which served alongside the Germans in Rome, they "fought in the belief they were defending their country." La Russa's Sept. 8 speech was the second time in two days that a top leader of Italy's "post-fascist" National Alliance party — a key ally in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling coalition — had opened wounds that most Italians have considered closed for decades.

Napolitano, a member of a Naples youth resistance movement during World War II, left no room in his own remarks for any backsliding on what is accepted history in Italy. "All the social, political and intellectual components" of Italy's postwar democracy come from those who opposed the Nazis and their Italian fascist allies, Napolitano said. La Russa's controversial speech came just a day after Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno refused to categorically condemn Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. Interviewed by Milan daily Corriere Della Sera following a visit to Israel, Alemanno, who also belongs to National Alliance, said he did not consider fascism an "absolute evil." While racial laws passed by Mussolini in the last five years of his two-decade reign were abhorrent, Alemanno told the newspaper, "fascism was a more complex phenomenon. Many people signed up in good faith."

Alemanno's comments were denounced by Jewish groups, surviving resistance leaders and members of the center-left opposition. Walter Veltroni, former Rome mayor and current head of the major center-left Democratic party, said he would resign from a city committee spearheading the building of a Holocaust memorial museum in protest. The National Alliance has spent the past few years distancing itself from its extremist past. Five years ago, Gianfranco Fini, the longtime National Alliance party chief, used the words "absolute evil" to describe Mussolini's regime. Coming at the conclusion of his first trip to Israel, the then deputy Prime Minister appeared to have definitively separated his party from its fascist origins. This week's comments have undone a lot of that work.

Before his flight from Rome in 1943, Mussolini reigned over an iron-fisted dictatorship. He instituted one-party rule, eliminated basic freedoms, and ordered the killing of political opponents. In 1938, Italy instituted racial laws which helped pave the way for the subsequent deportation of thousands of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps. But fascist or "post-fascist" Italians still try to separate the excesses of the leaders from what they consider a worthy ideology and the good intentions of its followers. In some sense, the comments by La Russa and Alemanno express the two halves of the nostalgia in fascist circles. La Russa sought to defend the legacy of the soldiers who fought, and sometimes died, in pro-Mussolini forces. Alemanno hinted at the need in Italy for the kind of rigidly controlled, law-abiding society that was said to have existed under fascism.

But both miss a larger point that their leader Fini had finally seemed to grasp about the "absolute" lessons that must be drawn from history. As Venice mayor Massimo Cacciari said after La Russa's remarks: Nazi soldiers also believed that they were defending their nation, and no German politician would think to praise their efforts.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

“The Borghild-project – a discreet matter of the Third Reich” by Norbert Lenz from Salon.comThe world’s first sexdoll – or "gynoid" – was built in 1941 by a team of craftsmen from Germany's Hygiene Museum in Dresden. The project was supervised by the famous preparator and technician Franz Tschakert. The ”Father of the Woman of Glass”, which happened to be the sensation in 1930’s Second International Hygiene Exhibit, used his skills and experience to create a kind of doll the world had never seen before. The ”field-hygienic project” was an initiative of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, who regarded the doll as an ” counterbalance” (or regulating effect) for the sexual drive of his stormtropers. In one his letters, dated 20.11.1940 he mentions the "unnessessary losses”, the Wehrmacht had suffered in France inflicted by street prostitutes.

”The greatest danger in Paris are the widespread and uncontrolled whores, picking by clients in bars, dancehalls and other places. It is our duty to prevent soldiers from risking their health, just for the sake of a quick adventure.” The project – called Burghild in the first place – was considered ”Geheime Reichssache” , which was ”more secret than top secret” at the time. Himmler put his commander-in-chief SS-Dr. Joachim Mrurgowsky in charge, the highest ranking officer of Berlins notorious SS-institute.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

From the Salt Lake Tribune. The Associated Press 9/03/2009 IDAHO FALLS, Idaho » Bonneville County officials say there's no plans to remove the swastikas emblazoned on the courthouse floor, despite remodeling work underway.The swastikas, lined in tile, are often painted over, the Post Register reported. But as the paint wears down, they show through.Historian Julie Brawn says not much is known about the decision to use swastikas, but the intentions were not likely evil. The building -- and floor -- was built in 1921, more than a decade before Adolf Hitler took power and adopted the swastika as the Nazi symbol. Brawn says the design has appeared throughout much of history, often as a symbol of luck or fertility.Idaho Falls attorney Reginald Reeves says the design hurts Idaho's image and should be removed. But Braun disagrees, saying a placard explaining the history should be installed instead.I'm looking for photos from this piece but can't find any at the moment.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Produced before the socialist brothers of Communism & National Socialism split entirely. Pretty crazy image no?Those National Bolsheviks would be into this undoubtedly. German pin bronze Pforzheim Reichsverband Labor Day signed Tag Der Arbeit eagle sickle hammer 1934